


Unafraid of Toil

by scatteredmoonlight



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/M, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scatteredmoonlight/pseuds/scatteredmoonlight
Summary: Hogwarts rebuilds after the war, new students and old picking up the pieces within themselves. Every day is a challenge for Elena, but she can make it through with Damon beside her.





	Unafraid of Toil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettysophist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettysophist/gifts).



Hogsmeade in wintertime made everything feel so magical. Snowflake upon snowflake drifting and sifting through bitter cold air, falling onto mounds, cakes of it frosting windowsills, and the best was the snow making a home on the chopped wood logs nestled outside stores. The streets were cozier, shops warmer, buildings quainter. The bitter aches, both physical and mental, that plagued Elena and other students hurt less after this day trip. The shellshock from the Battle of Hogwarts, as everyone seemed to call it, kept people either overly friendly and extending an arm to anyone they could, or students stuck to their own group of confidants, the wounds from last year still healing. She didn’t know where she fit in. She always had Caroline and Bonnie, of course, but experienced too much fighting alongside them during the Battle. But she didn’t have to think with Damon. Maybe because they’d been on completely different parts of Hogwarts then, as awful as that was to say.

She spent that day in Hogsmeade with him, trying out all the various flavors of butterbeer and evading enchanted snowballs outside the entrance of a joke shop. Nothing felt amiss with Damon. He’d say something dry and sarcastic, shock her with his gall, and they’d fall into the little routine they had before the war. Back when he was just the vampire who lurked Hogwarts grounds, eating and erasing but never killing, and she was the Hufflepuff who rose to the challenge of becoming a guardian of Hogwarts, vowing to stop it from vampiric incidents, even if it wasn’t on a macro-scale like Voldemort and Death Eaters.

With Damon, she even felt a little closer to the Muggle-born Virginian from Mystic Falls who had never heard of Harry Potter, Voldemort, or even Hogwarts. He reminded her of summers back home, gossiping with Bonnie and Caroline over the dresses worn to Founder’s Day. Or Aunt Jenna’s elaborate attempts to cook an all-encompassing, wholesome breakfast before Elena was shipped off back to wizarding boarding school in Scotland. Jenna always piled the food thickly on her plate, apron stained and eyes harried as she belted out in panic, “Eat the hash browns, Elena! Do they have hash browns at Hogwarts? God, please tell me they have bacon.” And in an abrupt, sharp quip to Jeremy, “Coffee’s off limits, boy.”

Elena dug her chin into the loops of her thick, yellow scarf, the warmth of her breath tickling her nose and cheeks. She smiled.

Elena and Damon trailed through the streets of Hogsmeade, their boots crunching over the freshly laid snow. Out the corner of her eye, she could see the blue of Damon’s Ravenclaw scarf bundled around his neck. His beanie she’d learned to knit from Charms class. With the beanie, his clear eyes were stunning and difficult to look away from. She couldn’t help but kiss him whenever assaulted by the visual.

Damon bumped her shoulder and drew her wrist over his.

Her fingers curled over his arm. So many layers separated them, but she felt a spark at the touch, the magic in his warmth.

"My nerd senses are tingling," muttered Damon. "C'mon, Cough it up. What are you thinking about so hard you’re getting frown lines?"

Elena scoffed, a little burst of surprise bubbling up.

Damien brushed his lips over her temple.

What could she say? She did love this day. Hogsmeade. Feeling Damon beside her, even if he were only no longer a vampire because Death Eaters tortured him with a medieval curing ceremony straight out of Voldemort’s playbook. They didn’t even have reason for it, just boredom, and the lucky vampire they’d caught had the luxury of being seen as an abomination of nature. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she relived the memory of finding him. Down to the blood stained clothes, eyes black from dilated pupils, his pale body two seconds away from fainting and breaking his chin on the tiled floor of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. The Death Eaters had long gone, but the sparks still flew from Elena’s wand before she could stop it. Luckily Bonnie had been thinking clearly and raised protective wards.

They had suffered so much loss, so many people who Elena never knew and never would. At least the school reopened and gave them the chance to digest the year with a bittersweet return to normalcy.

She took a breath, nose aching from the cold. "Do you remember how we met?" She didn’t know why she said it.

Damon laughed. "Yeah. Some Dudley-Do-Right kids all coincidentally from Mystic Falls miraculously found each other and tried to save the school from its super weird blood sucking problem, also from Mystic Falls. All around weird, if you ask me."

"And you saved us from a band of centaurs."

"No horse should be that buff."

Elena stopped in front of him, clasping their hands together and leaning against his chest. “You saved us. Bonnie, Caroline, and I... You saved us."

Stefan had been there, too, saving them. But he was now in St Mungo’s, receiving help due to the years spent after Death Eaters forced him to switch off his humanity and rip his way through the Forbidden Forest. It hurt too much, sometimes. She still couldn’t go to the Great Lake alone, haunted by too many good memories. She’d look at her old study tree and think, _We kissed beneath there after the first Quiddich match of my fifth year._

Damon kissed her forehead. “Speak to me, Elena."

She leaned into him, and the words flooded out. No hesitance or fear, never with Damon. "I don't know if I remember what life was like before all this, before last year. Voldemort, it... sometimes I wake up and forget it all ended. People thought it had ended a good year ago. What if it isn’t over? What if more people —"

"Hey, hey, hey – Shh..." Gloved thumbs brushed delicately beneath her eyes, wiping away tears she had not realized she had shed. "In my brief return to humanity, I have realized something. Mainly that I know jack. I’m probably not even qualified to hand out advice, but – one thing I do know is that little four eyed nerd and his friends are all up to snuff. If Harry freaking Potter says You-Know-Who is dead after fighting for us to even realize there even _was_ a war to fight, I believe him. I believe in Harry Potter. If Harry Potter says it is all good in the world, that’s good enough for me."

She had told herself much the same, but she was so used to surviving, relying on her own instincts and a few close allies. Believing in Harry Potter felt like being told to believe in myth.

But belief—trusting—that could be what she needed. Maybe it was naïve to believe, but it kept her grounded, it made her stay present and whole and sane when everything in her world spun into a blizzard of panic, confusion, uncertainty. This snowy day trip to Hogsmeade. Damon’s warmth, his humanity. Maybe all this happened because of terrible, unfortunate, torturous circumstances, and she hated that she found solace in the fruits of that suffering in this moment, but it filled her with so much hope. It reminded her of easier days, when the hardest thing was wondering how would she make it from Hogsmeade back to Hogwarts’ grounds without freezing. She rose to the tips of her toes to kiss Damon. It just felt right. She wanted to get lost in the comfort. The sensations of this moment. She could not say it, but she could show it.

She kissed him. Chapped, chilled lips from the snow, but that magnetic pull to get closer tugged on her like a more pleasant version of Apparation.

She got lost in him, and the feel of him, his warmth. It started out slow, just getting accustomed to the kiss, the feel and touch and life between them, but then that bloodlust Damon had lived with for over a century seized him. He clutched her hand so tight she felt a little pinch. He pulled her closer and kissed her with a bruising strength. She loved it. She loved feeling his passion and being reminded that he needed this—the unspoken understanding of how much this thing between them meant to him, just much as it meant to her. He combed his fingers through her hair and every nerve felt on fire.

They broke away. Elena scratched her lips over the stubble on Damon’s chin. She looked straight into those blue eyes so clear and vibrant. “I love you, Damon Salvatore.” What if she couldn't say it tomorrow?

Damien kissed her forehead. "I love you, too."


End file.
